The book gives details of the purported Soviet autopsies of Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun, Joseph and Magda Goebbels, their children, and General Hans Krebs.

[27] On 6 June 1945, Western correspondents cited the statements of Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov's staff that Hitler's body was most likely one of four charred corpses found in the Führerbunker on 3 May or 4 May, burned by the Red Army's flamethrowers before they stormed in.

"[32] In early July, Time magazine reported that the Soviet investigation had produced no conclusive evidence of Hitler's death and asserted that he had ordered his men to spread false news of his demise.

[33] In early July 1945, British newspapers quoted a Soviet major who reputedly led the Red Army into the Chancellery garden as saying that he saw a body near the bunker exit which he thought was "a very poor double".

[67] English historian Mark Felton suggested that this may have been done to conceal Nazi forensic fraud, specifically putting Hitler and Braun's dental remains into the mouths of decoy bodies.

[120] In 1956, Mengershausen stated that it was he and SS-Unterscharführer Glanzer who moved the remains (Hitler's corpse largely intact except for the feet), putting them on boards and burying them in a 2-meter (6+1⁄2-foot)-deep crater under 1 m of soil, over about 90 minutes.

[121] Linge, who in 1955 implied that the corpse burned only briefly,[51]: 11:00  stated that Günsche reputedly "ordered an SS officer called Hans Reisser to take some men of the Leibstandarte and bury the remains".

[97] In July 1945, Vandivert photographed American correspondent Percy Knauth troweling dirt in the crater Hitler and Braun were presumedly buried in (in agreement with Mengershausen and Mansfeld).

[128] Largely owing to Western interviews with eyewitnesses establishing that Hitler had died by gunshot, the NKVD and its successor, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, conducted a second investigation (known as "Operation Myth") from 1945 to 1946.

[129] The Soviets concluded that the poison capsules found in the mouths of the corpses wrongly identified as Hitler and Braun had been placed posthumously as part of a deliberate deception, evidently conducted by the Germans.

Bezymenski quotes SMERSH commander Ivan Klimenko's account, which states that on the night of 3 May 1945, he witnessed Vizeadmiral Hans-Erich Voss seem to recognize a body as Hitler's in a dry water tank filled with other corpses outside the Führerbunker, before recanting this identification.

[r] The lower jawbone fragment had 15 teeth, 10 of them largely or entirely artificial;[s] it was found loose in the oral cavity, and was broken and burnt around the alveolar process,[f] the bulge that encases the tooth sockets.

[5][t][u] Splinters of glass and a "thin-walled ampule" were alleged to have been found in the mouth, apparently from a cyanide capsule,[176] which was ruled to be the cause of death,[134] although no dissection of internal organs was recorded, making this unverifiable.

[189] Bezymenski criticizes Nazi Germany's initial announcement of Hitler's death as an example of the dictator's 'big lie' propaganda technique as it implied him to have died as a soldier fighting "to the last breath".

[191] Bezymenski quotes SS-General Rattenhuber as telling the Soviets that before killing himself with cyanide, Hitler ordered Linge to return in ten minutes to deliver a coup de grâce-style gunshot to ensure his death.

The bodies were identified by Vizeadmiral Voss, Chancellery cook Wilhelm Lange, and Karl Schneider (referred to as the head garage mechanic), "all of whom knew [the Goebbels family] well".

[199] Joseph Goebbels's body was "heavily scorched", but was identified by his size, estimated age, shortened right leg and related orthopedic appliance, as well as his head characteristics and dental remains, which included many fillings.

Voss identified two items found on the corpse as having been in her possession: a cigarette case inscribed "Adolf Hitler—29.X.34", which she had used for the last three weeks of her life, and Hitler's Golden Party Badge, which the dictator had given her three days before his suicide.

[219] Bezymenski cites Sognnaes and Strøm (whose 1972 report is included in English) as supporting his view that Hitler's confirmed dental remains prove that the Soviets found his body.

"[228] In a 2003 episode of National Geographic's Riddles of the Dead, Bezymenski elaborates that the KGB only granted him access to the documents in the Soviet archive on the basis that he would maintain the narrative that Hitler died by cyanide and say his remains had been cremated by June 1945.

[177] A main issue they cite is that the autopsies on the alleged remains of Hitler and Braun did not include a record of dissection of their internal organs, which would have shown with certainty whether poison was a factor in their deaths.

[236] Petrova and Watson had the skull fragment examined by a forensic expert, who agreed with the view advanced by Bezymenski in 1982 that the exit wound was larger on top, purportedly implying that the shot was fired from below.

[237][238][239] In his 1983 book, American historian Donald McKale argues that Western authors were wrong to dismiss the alleged autopsy report and that the narrative of Hitler's death by gunshot styled him into a symbol of anti-communism.

[240] In 1995, Joachimsthaler criticized Bezymenski's account in his book on Hitler's death, reaching the same conclusion put forward 45 years earlier by U.S. jurist Michael Musmanno (presiding judge at the Einsatzgruppen trial) that the dictator's corpse was almost completely burned to ashes—meaning that no body would have remained to perform an autopsy on.

[242] Only the report's coverage of the dental remains has been substantially verified, with 2017–2018 analysis led by French forensic pathologist Philippe Charlier concluding that the extant evidence "[fits] perfectly" with the Soviet description.

[245] In 2018, investigative journalists Jean-Christophe Brisard and Lana Parshina allowed that Hitler could have commissioned Linge to shoot him through the temples due to his poor health (e.g. hand tremors),[58] but largely dismiss Bezymenski's book as propagandistic.

[246] Daly-Groves argues that potential unexplored documents in the Russian archives could end decades of speculation;[246] his own book includes clearer scans of the Soviet photographs of Hitler and Braun's alleged burnt corpses.

[247] In his 2023 analysis, Mark Felton cites the lack of evidence of a gunshot in Hitler's alleged autopsy and notes the missing left foot, strangely implying amputation;[22]: 8:00, 14:30  moreover, Braun's dental record proves the body was not hers.

[68] Felton suggests that deception by eyewitnesses would help explain how the Soviets inaccurately identified a body as Braun's, despite it apparently exhibiting an unexplained pre-mortem abdomen wound.

[69] By their own accounts (shared in the 1960s), the Soviets did find Hitler's teeth with a body double,[151] but the alleged autopsy removes them to the "oral cavity" of a charred corpse—supposedly killed by cyanide—from a Chancellery crater (reckoned by three often-unreliable eyewitnesses).